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Friday, December 4, 2015

Craft, Principles, and other Lessons of the Trade

Over the past couple of
decades, I've learned a lot about writing. Some I learned from attending
classes, some from other authors, from editorial letters by talented
publishers, some from trial and error through writing my own stories, some from
reading other author’s works, and a whole lot from reading non-fiction books
about writing. Two of my favorite books are On
Writing by Stephen King, and Story by
Robert McKee, which has been beaten up and scribbled on with love. I love the
fact that Robert McKee says story itself is about principles, not rules, and that
craft is an art.

As I write, many principles
come to mind as far a dos and don'ts. The biggest ones for me are:

Try not to begin the
first sentence of a chapter by describing the weather right off the bat.

Don't repeat a word in
the same sentence or paragraph. (She fled the scene and fled to Mexico)

Narration brings the
story from A, to B, and eventually to Z, but don’t tell.

Description creates a
sensory for the reader. It begins in the writer's imagination, but should
finish in the reader's.

Don't slow the pace with
too many descriptions. (a big lesson for me)

Dialogue brings characters
to life through their speech.

Try not to tell the same
information twice, even if a character is telling it to two different people.
Change it, make it brief the second time. It is a waste of the reader's time.
They already know it.

Show as opposed to tell.
(BIG)

Research, but put it as
far in the background as you can.

Let the characters do
things their way. Be true to them, not you.

Listen to your
characters as they try to talk to you while you're showering or trying to fall
asleep. Take note.

If the chapter is in one
character's POV (point of view), and the other person is on the phone, we cannot hear what the
person they're talking to is saying.

“Beat” builds scenes, “scenes”
build the sequence, “sequences” build the act, the series of “acts” build the
story.

The first sentence and
the last sentence of each chapter should be fire, just a beat above all that's in-between.

What does the
protagonist want? What is his/her conscious desire? What stands in the way?

What is the inciting
incident?

Get to the back-story
ASAP.

Find an Ideal Reader to
test read, and ask what bored them.

What is the crisis
within the climax?

Curse if your character
is one to curse.

The prefix for phone numbers should be 555.

Use clichés if your character
would say those words. They will be familiar, relatable words to the reader,
and the reader will not think you're lazy, or that you stole them. Try not to
use them in narrative.

An adverb here or there
never hurt anyone.

Read the first draft
aloud. Revise. Print it out, pencil in hand, revise, and read it aloud again. Two
drafts and a polished third draft.

I do fudge on some of
these a bit, but not a lot. Like sometimes, I believe it is okay to briefly describe the weather at the beginning of a chapter, for purposes of setting. Still, I
honor the principles, and more than anything, I respect them. They were hard
learned lessons by those writers who created masterpieces before us. Yet along the
way, we learn what works best for our design. We as writers are word architects, building
our character’s story from the ground up, utilizing all of the tools necessary
to transcribe what we see and hear. Stay true to those characters!

The craft lessons are indeed voices that we listen to as we write. They are voices that remind us what to do
and not do, what to try and not try, what to delete or keep, like a wise and
trusted friend.

Robert McKee said, “Talent
without craft is like fuel without an engine.” We must study up, read up, write
up, and write on!

Writers, are there any specific craft principles that ring consistently
as you write? Please share.

Cindy McKenzie

Eugenia O'Neal

Shauna S. Roberts

Farrah Rochon

Terence Taylor

Susan Vondrak

Mystery

Dayton Ward

Science fiction & horror

Karen White-Owens

Contemporary romance

Stefanie Worth

Supernatural Stories of Passion & Suspense

SORMAG interviews Novel Spaces

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